What is Metadata: Why is metadata important?

When I first got into SEO all I heard was meta this and meta that. Everyone seemed to be speaking a foreign language, but all I did was nod my head and play along. I waited too long before I asked the question, what is Metadata!?

A quick Google search explains it as “data about data”… Which really doesn’t help much. After playing it off like I knew what I was talking about long enough, I starting getting real answers and started understanding what it really is. Metadata is anything in the website coding tagged with meta. That tag is everywhere and it does a number of things, things that might not even be visible to the user.

The meta you probably see the most often is the meta title. That’s what you see at the top of this page as the title of this tab. You likely read that text more often than you realize! Another form of metadata we frequently look at is the meta description of a website. The description is often what you see as the summary of a page under the link on a search engine. We take advantage of these things every day without even knowing it.

Why is metadata important?

Although we might not notice how much we take advantage of this “data about data”, search engines don’t take anything lightly.

Wherever there is data, there will be metadata, and that ends up with me typing the word meta more times than I care to count. Even I can’t guess how many meta tags there are in the coding of a website. Fortunately for us, search engines do all the work and don’t have any problem sorting through all the boring background noise to find the most relevant results for our searches.

The short version of all this is, metadata is everywhere. Not utilizing it leaves you looking like a store without a sign. Maybe even has you looking a little cheap. Any good concierge isn’t going to send you to a restaurant with a dollar menu, when you clearly said you wanted a quality meal. Don’t go losing traffic and potential business all because you weren’t willing to take the time to fill out something you might not be able to see!

Still Confused?

Internet marketing is a world that is constantly evolving. If you have questions about what meta data is, or anything else, feel free to contact us. I may not have all the answers myself, but I work with an excellent team that is more than willing to share their knowledge.